Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/257

Rh a firmer hold on the earth that they may rise higher into the heavens. Their conservatism is a dead but solid heart-wood which is the pivot and firm column of support to all their growth, appropriating nothing to itself, but forever, by its support, assisting to extend the area of their radicalism. Half a century after they are dead at the core, they are preserved by radical reforms. They do not, like men, from radicals turn conservatives. Their conservative part dies out first, their radical and growing part survives. They acquire new states and territories while the old dominions decay and become the habitation of bears and owls and coons.

Jan. 24, 1858. Nut Meadow Brook. The river is broadly open as usual this winter. You can hardly say that we have had any sleighing at all though five or six inches of snow lay on the ground five days after January 6th. But I do not quite like this warm weather and bare ground at this season. What is a winter without snow and ice in this latitude? The bare earth is unsightly. This winter is but unburied summer.

At Nut Meadow Brook the small sized water-bugs are as abundant and active as in summer. I see forty or fifty circling together in the smooth and sunny bays all along the